In this book, Mark Johnston argues that God needs to be saved not only from the distortions of the 'undergraduate atheists' (Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Sam Harris) but, more importantly, from the idolatrous tendencies of religion itself. Each monotheistic religion has its characteristic ways of domesticating True Divinity, of taming God's demands so that they do not radically threaten our self-love and false righteousness. Turning the monotheistic critique of idolatry on the monotheisms themselves, Johnston shows that much in these traditions must be condemned as false and spiritually debilitating. A central claim of the book is that supernaturalism is idolatry. If this is right, everything changes; we cannot place our salvation in jeopardy by tying it essentially to the supernatural cosmologies of the ancient Near East. Remarkably, Johnston rehabilitates the ideas of the Fall and of salvation within a naturalistic framework; he then presents a conception of God that both resists idolatry and is wholly consistent with the deliverances of the natural sciences.
Princeton University Press is publishing "Saving God" in conjunction with Johnston's forthcoming book "Surviving Death", which takes up the crux of super naturalist belief, namely, the belief in life after death.
- ISBN13 9781400830442
- Publish Date 11 July 2011 (first published 16 July 2009)
- Publish Status Active
- Publish Country US
- Imprint Princeton University Press
- Format eBook
- Pages 216
- Language English
- URL http://degruyter.com/search?f_0=isbnissn&q_0=9781400830442&searchTitles=true